El Fortín

In a country that is ranked second poorest in the Western Hemisphere, on a continent with the greatest gap between rich and poor in the world, lies the community of El Fortín. It is still amazing to think that this somewhat isolated country community lies a mere 10 minutes from the hustle and bustle of Granada.

The two couldn´t be more different. Step into Granada and you are stepping into the same conundrum that plagues most tourist spots-- the beautiful architecture, horsedrawn carriages, new restaurants and bars catering to foreign clientele, all of which try, but cannot mask, the extreme poverty that actually lives and breathes beneath the surface. Elderly women begging for scraps of your food. Teenage boys huffing glue in the park. Barefoot children in ragged clothes who should be in school wandering the streets without destination or purpose.

All the while, this country is one of my very favorites. Yes, there is poverty. Yes, there are dire circumstances. However, there is something very unique to Nicaragua. Something intangible, but can be felt in the warmth and love we have (and are) experiencing in El Fortín.

We arrived on Monday with aprehensions. We hadn´t heard back from María Teresa, our contact, so we werent sure if our host stays were secure, and we still didn´t know exactly what she wanted us to do. On top of that, there were other questions. How had things changed since we began our project there two and a half years ago? Or worse, for the sake of the project, how had things remained the same?

El Fortín, as I have said, couldn´t be more different from Granada. Whereas Granada is full of the deafening sounds of microbuses, bachata music, chicken buses, and street vendors, there is an initial eerie quiet when you arrive, exacerbated by the silence of the people who live there. There isn´t a lot of talking going on at my host family´s house. The very first time I came to El Fortín, I got to my family´s house and they grabbed me a chair, invited me to sit down, and they proceeded to make a semi-circle of chairs around me and stare at me. Just stare. No questions of who I was or why I was there. Awkward silence. Being someone who, lets face it, likes to talk and has a tendency to fill silent voids with conversation, this was a shocker. But, it also made me think that perhaps this is just an environment where silence isn´t something to be avoided- you don´t talk unless you have something to say.

Our work for the time we are there is dedicated to public health. As I have said, the children in this community were tested for parasites last year, and every single one of them tested positive. To put this in perspective, there are about 400 houses in both areas of El Fortín, many of which house several families. Thats a lot of kids.

We have been going house by house taking height and weight measurements of the children. This is crucial information to determine of the kids are malnurished, underdeveloped or have intestinal parasites. It was truly eye-opening walking house by house, opening the barbed wire and wooden stake fences, approaching houses made of cinder block or wood or tin, and asking tired mothers or grandmothers if we could weigh the kids running around the house. One house that we approached had seven kids (the eldest of which was 11) and no parents.

Some kids were healthier than others. I´m no medical expert, but it didn´t take much to look at these kids, look at their measurements, and know that they are terribly malnourished. Children with skeletal arms and legs and the caracteristic potbelly, so often an indicator for parasites, or malnourishment. This information, once sent to the government health agencies, will hopefully bring more help to this community that desperately needs it.

The situation sounds dire, and perhaps when talking of health and economics, it is. But there is another side to El Fortín, and I see it everyday when I have legions of kids following us around to play with us. They look like the happiest kids in the world, and it pains me that they have so much of life stacked against them. Maybe this was our bigger mission with LASED- to give these kids a fighting chance to escape circumstance. But unlike other programs, we realize that a diversified approach is the only way to success-- families need income to afford to send their kids to school, kids need to go to school in order to succeed, but kids cannot succeed on empty stomachs. Or when they are sick.

But for now, I am enjoying life tremendously. From feeling super popular with the 7 year olds, to taking bucket showers in the sun, I remember why I love this place so much. Maybe some people here don´t talk much, but when it comes to making us feel so welcome and part of the family, they don´t need to.